Whatever A Spider Can 4: Electro The Human Lightning Bolt

If someone sees the headline “Elephant Escapes In Children’s Hospital,” one can only expect that the corresponding story will consist of total tragedy. When I saw the title “Electro The Human Lightning Bolt,” I got the same kind of feeling. Electro, for all its nerdiness, is a projectile-weapon based villain. Thus, he will require some sort of decent quality animation to pull off. Considering that the hand-to-hand fight scenes in Spider-Man look like two paper dolls trying to block each other from the same doorway, this is going to be a problem. And like the aforementioned elephant in the children’s hospital, it is going to ruin the lives of some kids forever.

Plot:

Spider-Man finds a careless Electro trying to steal from J. Jonah Jameson. Electro frames Spider-Man for the crime, then manages to frame Spider-Man again for a similar crime. This plot line doesn’t go anywhere, as Spidey soon finds Electro’s amusement park hideout and uses a special web formula something to tie up Electro. He then dangles Electro outside Jameson’s window, just for the ego boost of it.

Spider-Man does absolutely no searching when it comes to finding Electro. Electro, while disabling an alarm with small lightning bolts, manages to let some gigantic ones out of an open window. Insert electric fart joke here. I don’t know how he manages to be so lazy with his control over electricity, but since all of Spidey’s villains take as much caution in their crimes as someone who says “The police will never know it was me, because I’ll wear my victim’s face!” it should be expected.

Hey, kids! Spider-Man’s awesome, right?

Electro’s hideout is an amusement park which is a weird choice considering everything ever. It feels tacked on simply to give Electro a chance to try and ride a roller coaster slowly into Spider-Man or get Spider-Man trapped in a spinning barrel. That actually happens. Spider-Man gets trapped in one of those funhouse spinning barrel rides. Men, you can relate exactly to how Spider-Man feels here by never achieving an erection again.

Animation Woe:

At two points in the episode, Electro escapes by surfing on power lines. This, by all means, should be the coolest damn thing ever, but somehow the show manages to ruin it. Don’t ask me how the concept of “awesome” can be sabotaged, but I imagine that it’s like what happens when you find out that the casserole your eating is made of mulch and your grandparents.

Wicked guitar solo.

Amazing Spidey Quote:

Electro: “Looks like you’re a born looooooooossssseeeeeerrrr!”

Electro says this while doing the power line surfing I just talked about. Whoops. Looks like I just broke the word “irony.”